Dallas Black Dance Theatre explores the fleeting nature of time and memories in Joy Bollinger’s new work, This Time, part of the company’s Director’s Choice Series at the Wyly Theatre.

Dallas — It has been a fall to remember for Joy Bollinger who not only will be presenting her first program as artist director of Bruce Wood Dance (BWD) this month, but also showcasing her first commissioned piece at Dallas Black Dance Theatre’s (DBDT) Director’s Choice Series, Nov. 2-4, at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre in the Dallas Arts District. Bollinger’s new work, This Time, will be performed alongside works by Tommie-Waheed Evans, Lily Cabatu Weiss and Elisa Monte and David Brown.

“I have choreographed on BWD. I was asked to choreograph a piece on my alma mater Texas Christian University,” Bollinger says. “But this was the first time an outside professional dance company has asked me to choreography on them and that was just an exciting milestone.”

She adds, “I love being a choreographer and I hope in the future I can continue down that path in whatever way. I am just really thankful for this opportunity to work with DBDT.”

Bollinger was contacted over the summer by DBDT’s newly-appointed artistic director Melissa Young about setting a piece for the company’s Director’s Choice performance at the beginning of November. Young says she was blown away when she saw BWD perform Bollinger’s Carved in Stone in 2016, and began to wonder how her movement language would translate onto DBDT’s dancers.

“Since we are a repertory company, in my opinion our dancers do an amazing job of morphing into every style put before them,” Young says. “We didn’t have any works in our repertoire with Joy’s distinct movement language and overall tone. I knew whatever she chose to create would be a perfect fit. So, by adding This Time into our programming, our audiences will get to know Joy and her beautiful work as we travel across the country as well as get acquainted with another facet of how DBDT dancers move.”

Young adds, “The best part of this collaboration was the ease of how everything came together. From start to finish, I would consider it all Joy.”

Young and Bollinger’s history actually goes back almost 15 years when they danced alongside each other as part of a Bruce Wood Dance Company and DBDT collaboration in 2003. “There’s something about her calm energy that has always drawn me in. I really admired Joy as a person and her artistic abilities. The special care and attention to detail that she puts into her own dancing resonated with me over the years.”

If you have seen Bollinger’s previous works, Carved in Stone and Hillside, then you have probably noticed her penchant for large scale visuals, dynamic groups sections and musically-driven movement phrases. As we sat talking at the Bruce Wood Dance Gallery last Friday Bollinger notes that this piece for DBDT is very different from anything she has done before.

“For this piece I am using a much smaller group, only seven dancers, and since they will be performing in a smaller space I kept the architecture of the dance pretty simple. She jokes, “Plus, I don’t think we have any storage space left [at BWD’s studio] for another one of my props.”

What didn’t change this time around is Bollinger’s need to find music before jumping into the choreography. Bollinger already had a piece of music on her mind going into the process, but due to its length, she had to do a quick pivot and find something else, which she admits was a little challenging. “Finding music is crucial for me because I like to choreograph musically. So when I realized the first idea wasn’t going to work I was like “okay” what do I do now, but I just had to go with it.”

She laughingly adds, “I now realize I have a love affair with Olafur Arnalds because I start searching for music and when I realize I like something guess who it is. So, the three tracks I picked were done in collaboration with someone else and there is the sound of water in the music but also violence and sweeping and piano. You know, music you want to move too.”

This Time was inspired by Bollinger’s relationships with her children and grandmother and how over time these images become fractured and blurry, thus increasing our desire to hang on to these precious memories. To help the dancers find more personal meaning within the work Bollinger says, “I tell them what it means to me and then I say that’s not what it has to mean to you, but I want you to find what in your life connects and resonates with what that means to you.”

The most challenging part of the process for the dancers was learning a new movement vocabulary, Bollinger says. Audiences are very familiar with Bruce Wood’s unique aesthetic which features a strong balletic core so the dancers can effortless execute his off-axis turns, quick changing body positions and pendulum-like arm and leg movements.

“There were definitely a few things in the vocabulary that were new to them and probably countered how they often do things such as running low and in the floor and also the group aesthetic within the work. They are such dynamic performers, and I know every one of them has the capability to be a fantastic soloist, so they now have to keep that but also feel the group.”

You can see Dallas Black Dance Theatre in Joy Bollinger’s This Time at the company’s Director’s Choice Series at the Wyly Theatre this weekend.

Perfect TimingDallas Black Dance Theatre explores the fleeting nature of time and memories in Joy Bollinger’s new work, This Time, part of the company’s Director’s Choice Series at the Wyly Theatre.by Katie Dravenstott

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